Geoff Brumfiel

A spy balloon from China has been causing alarm in the U.S. What is it doing, and is it a threat to national security?

China's foreign ministry described the balloon as "a civilian airship" for meteorological research that had blown far off course by winds. The Pentagon suspects it's collecting sensitive information.

Computers traditionally excel at rocketry, so why do new artificial intelligence programs get it wrong?

Earthlings seemed to generate more good news in 2022 off the planet than on. From deflecting an asteroid to sending a camera deep into the universe, a look back on the year in space.

Even guardians of America's atomic clocks say time doesn't work the way we think it does.

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology track time with atomic clocks. But what is time, really? Physicists are still trying to answer that question.

Fusion energy has remained a distant dream for decades, but scientists announced they got more energy back than they put in to create the reaction. How close are we to fusion energy powering society?

Scientists announced a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion. They were able to coax more power out of an experiment than they put in.

A giant laser facility in Livermore, Calif., says it has created net energy from nuclear fusion. It's an important breakthrough, but fusion power remains a distant dream.

A NASA spacecraft passing by the moon on Monday is carrying 12,000 varieties of yeast. Researchers hope the tiny "yeastronauts" can teach them about how radiation will affect humans in space.

A briefing slide obtained by NPR through the Freedom of Information Act shows that former President Trump tweeted a classified satellite photo in 2019.

More than three years after his tweet, the U.S. government has formally declassified the image from one of its most powerful spy satellites.

New research shows that a type of primate known as an aye-aye loves picking its nose. Researchers say the findings raise interesting questions about why nose-picking is such a common behavior.

Advocates for inoculation are distressed by what they see as a new political focus on an old public health measure.

"You know, this image of Neanderthals being brutes, is not quite accurate," says paleogenticist Laurits Skov. "The more we learn about them, the more like humans they appear to be."

Researchers have uncovered the first Neanderthals that are related to each other. The finding shows that these ancient people lived in clans similar to those of modern humans.

Experts in Russian doctrine worry that as the war in Ukraine gets more desperate, Russia might be tempted to detonate a nuclear weapon.

NASA says its mission to knock an asteroid off course — a test of planetary defense — succeeded beyond its expectations.

President Biden's stark warning about the "tactical" nuclear weapons Russia might use is raising fears of a new crisis. But what are these weapons and how might they be used?

The events on Monday in the Baltic Sea resembled blasts from depth charges or mines, according to a Swedish researcher. They caused major leaks from the inactive Nord Stream pipelines.